Syria Pays Cash For Riot, Media Takes Propaganda For Free

Once again a flood of headlines present Israel as an aggressor responsible for the deaths of dozens of unarmed civilians. Was this really a peaceful protest or another Syrian-engineered attempt to breach Israel’s border? Where did the media get it right and where did it go wrong?

Syrian Media: A Credible Source?

For many weeks, Syrian state controlled media (and it is all state controlled) has failed to report on President Bashar Assad’s brutal and murderous assault his own citizens’ peaceful protests against the Syrian regime. So why then did the media rush to quote casualty figures provided by Syrian media despite the lack of any concrete confirmation of the number of deaths or injuries from either side?

By nightfall, the Syrian news agency SANA reported that 22 protesters had been killed and more than 350 had been wounded. Israeli officials said that they had no information on casualties but suggested that the Syrian figures were exaggerated.

Even so, it was the worst bloodshed in the Golan Heights since Israel and Syria fought a war there in 1973.

So, the official Syrian news agency, which has every reason to inflate the casualty figures, reports that 22 people were killed by Israeli troops. Israel says that it disputes the figures. The Israeli information operation is far from perfect, but it’s much better than the Assad regime’s information operation. So skepticism about these figures is certainly warranted.

And yet, the Times follows this ambiguous paragraph about the death toll with a declaration: “Even so, it was the worst bloodshed in the Golan Heights since Israel and Syria fought a war there in 1973.” How does the Times know this? How does the Times know how many people died? The only source for the death toll is the Assad regime’s propaganda apparatus.

Protestors or Infiltrators?

Events on the Golan played out in similar fashion to the events of the so-called Naqba Day one month previously as did the press coverage. Many headlines referred to Israel opening fire on “protestors”. But this was not your run of the mill protests, nor was it peaceful. This was an attempt to breach Israel’s borders in a hostile act.

The term “protestors” conjures visions of placard carrying activists rather than the more accurate term of “rioters” who threw Molotov Cocktails and stones and confronted Israeli soldiers while trying to enter Israel.

Any infiltration has to be taken seriously and that is how the press should also have treated these incidents – as attempts to illegally breach a sovereign nation’s borders.

Despite this, Karl Vick of Time Magazine chose to frame the incident in this way:

Television images on Sunday from the Golan Heights village of Majdal Shams showed apparently unarmed Palestinian civilians marching peacefully down a hill toward Israeli soldiers who had assumed firing positions. Then came a crackle of gunshots; bloodied bodies were then carried back up the hill. It went on for hours, with 20 people reported dead according to Syrian state television. The human cost was high but for a Palestinian movement trying to reframe itself, the footage at least set it on a course along on the lines of Birmingham, Soweto and Gandhi’s Salt March — parallels it has been making explicitly.

Aside from falsely presenting Palestinians as Gandhian acolytes, this description certainly does not correspond with other media reports that confirmed that the IDF had issued clear warnings in Arabic and fired tear gas before firing over the heads of the Palestinians in an attempt to convince them to halt. The use of live fire and then, only used selectively, was solely a last resort.

Palestinian “Refugees”

Protesters said they were hoping to emulate Hassan Hijazi, who managed to reach his former home in the Israeli coastal city of Jaffa after the last protest before turning himself into the police.

In fact, Hassan Hijazi, like all of those Palestinians involved in May’s border infiltration, had never set foot inside Israel before and therefore could not have been attempting to reach their “former homes”. Most of those Palestinians involved in May’s and this latest incident are second and third generation descendants of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948.

Yesterday’s protest was meant to mark Naqsa, the anniversary of the Six Day War, in which Israel annexed the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Many of the demonstrators were Palestinians who have been unable to return to their homes for decades.

In addition to wrongly crediting Palestinians with the ability to “return” to homes that they never left in the first place, Times journalist Sheera Frenkel also mistakenly states that Israel annexed the West Bank. Israel, has, in fact, never annexed the West Bank, which was instead, Israeli administered and not absorbed into the State of Israel.

While this may seem like a minor point, it is extremely important in light of the many legal arguments surrounding the status of those territories captured in 1967.

Misleading reporting such as the examples above only serves to promote the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” and to mislead over the status of the Palestinian territories.

Meanwhile, CNN still believes that Hamas-run Gaza is still under Israeli “occupation”:

Israel has made peace with the other two parties to the 1967 Six-Day War, Egypt and Jordan, but still occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza as well as the Golan Heights.

A Media Setup

The Reform Party of Syria has learned today, from intelligence sources close to the Assad regime in Lebanon, that Syrians storming through the Golan Height next to the Quneitra crossing are Syrian farmers who have migrated in recent years from the drought-stricken northeast Syria to the south. Estimates put the number at 250,000 impoverished migrants.

Information received cite the regime has paid hundreds of these farmers $1,000 each to show-up and $10,000 to their families should any of them succumb to Israeli fire. In Syria, an average salary is about $200 a month and to these impoverished farmers, such a one-time sum can keep them economically afloat for six months.

Even The Guardian, referring to the previous Naqba Day violence on the Lebanese border, acknowledged the possibility that Arab demonstrators could be motivated by money rather than ideology:

One demonstrator who was wounded that day told the Guardian the Lebanese militia Hezbollah had given him $50 to turn up at the border and $900 to have his gunshot wounds treated by physicians. He said he had been planning to return to Maroun al-Ras yesterday until the rally was cancelled.

The buses of protestors only reached the border area because authorities allowed them to. They may well have been organised by the regime or at the very least encouraged….

The tragic events were carried live by Syrian state television in marked contrast to the cover up perpetrated by Syrian government media of the military offensive being waged against its own people inside the country that has killed hundreds.

State ‘journalists’ appeared to have recovered their ability to count bodies stating at least twenty had been killed

While the world watches the pictures from the Golan, it will be distracted from the bigger story, Syria’s slaughter of its own people and the gradual demise of the Assad regime.

What Really Happened?

After investigating the incident, the IDF believes that many of the Syrian rioters were responsible for their own deaths by igniting mine fields on the border. YNet News reports:

Responding to Sunday’s violence, IDF sources said the protesters who ignited minefields on ‘Naksa Day’ did not bring fire extinguishers with them and thus posed a danger to themselves and others by behaving irresponsibly. Others threw firebombs near Quneitra crossing to the same effect, they said.

The sources are also assuming that many protesters were hurt or killed as a result of the Red Cross’s inability to reach them, due to protesters’ refusal to cease violence in order to allow for medical evacuations.

IDF officials say commanders ordered three ceasefires, each of which were taken advantage of by the protesters in order to gain ground.

Whatever the real story behind what occurred on the Israeli-Syrian border, once again Israel finds itself damaged by a media that rushed to produce sensationalist headlines based on the less than credible propaganda organ of a brutal dictatorship with no regard for its own people let alone the Palestinian pawns in its war on Israel.

Those are not peaceful “protestors” in Syria. They are a buch of extremists and cold-blooded killers. Most of them had been trained and paid for in foreign countries. Their aim is to destroy Syria. This does not mean in any way that the regime in Damascus is a great one; it is no news to say that it is one of the oldest and the most corrupt dictatorships in the whole world. But the truth remains something else. this is not a revolution for freedom and democracy.

I don’t give a damn. . .
If people are stupid enough to take the chance to have themselves killed, influenced by some agitators that are watching from a safe distance and drinking tea, let it be.
The reason the disputed regions are occupied is not the result of Jewish aggression but the result of their neighbors waging, and losing, that stupid 6th day war.
Because they lost they lost more than their faces, they lost some territory as well.
What should have happened if they had won is an open question. Most probably another Holocaust.
At the moment we have the situation that the aggressor is crying that it is not honest the Jewish state keeps some of the terrain gained with the loss of life of brave soldiers, defending their country, in a war they did not ask for in the first place.
As I see it; The, not independently confirmed, deaths are a result of the actions of the aggressors in the 6th day war.
A message to the former owners: “Get lost,”

Fight the war with love, go ahead and love your enermies too, for they know not what they are doing because this war is also a spiritual struggle around the world. I love Israelis and her neighbours too.

Those wounded people, although given ample opportunity by Israel, were denied, by “protest” organizers, evacuation for medical services or even a tourniquet around their leg. they were allowed to bleed to death from non-fatal wounds so that Israel could be blamed for killing them.
At their funeral the next day, their relatives, angry that they had died from non-fatal wounds, attacked “protest” organizers. 14 people died at the funerals.

This is a spot on comment and well said. I have raised this issue an number of times but not nearly as detailed or as well put.
Nathan should send his comment to all members of Congress and to President Obama and Hillary Clinton. He should also send it to AIPAC. I would like to forward it to some friends and colleagues and request his permission to do so. He can reply to this posting if he agrees.

I wish to explain to Karen that since 1946, an estimated hundred million refugees have been rehabilitated worldwide. The Palestinians have a different UN definition for the Palestinians which grants them an indefinite status of “refugees”, despite the known fact that they have constantly served as political pawns for the different Arab regimes. In 1959 the Arab League passed a resolution that no Arab state was to grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees, thus eternalizing the refugee problem. This in itself is against international law, but in the West none of the regular bleeding hearts lost a blink of sleep over this despicable decision. Allow me also to remind Karen that an estimated 800,000 Jews were driven from their homes throughout Arabia with just the clothes they wore, because of the establishmen of Israel. About 60% of Israel’s population are descendents of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Arabia is more or less “Judenrein”, about a pitiful five thousand amidst 350 million. How’s that for apartheid and racism? (Where are those pathetic sanctimonious hypocrites?)
Recently, Abu Mazen stated that a future Palestinian state would be clean of Israelis and Jews. Guess what! Not one word of condemnation, no uproar, nothing. Can you imagine the worldwide reaction had an Israeli leader said this about the Arabs? Finally the Arab refugees were the result of Arab actions and it’s their job to solve the problem.

I would caution HR not to admonish media statements describing Palestinians born after 1948 wishing to return to homes they had never seen or been to before. Many Jews make that very same point about the Jews’ right to return to the land of Israel in 1948!

I sent a comment to the Washington Post over a similarly misleading headline regarding Israel killing “protesters”. There was no mention of these people storming an international border into another sovereign country, which is fundamentally different from a protest, yet the article itself acknowleged the Syrian payments. No response yet…

A valiant attempt at countering the adverse media comments. However Israel has a real problem if the Palestinians have now turned to (largely) peaceful demonstrations against Israel and the worst thing Israel can do is to use live ammunition against protestors. If the Times and Telegraph (not known for their anti-Israel stance) are now reporting critically of Israel then maybe they have a point and surely Israel’s crowd control should be a bit more sophisticated than tear gas followed by firing live amunition.
Also it seems that HR is guilty of reporting in a manner similar to that for which it criticises others. Perhaps Syria is indeed paying drought stricken Syrian farmers to demonstrate with enhanced payments for getting shot. But to quote this as fact in a headline report (“Plotted Pay Dirt Not Popular Protest”) based, it seems on 3rd hand information is not good journalism in my view. Couldn’t the report from the Reform Party of Syria based on intelligence sources close to Assad be simply propaganda? Certainly HR has in the past been highly critical of any media criticising Israel where there is no absolute incontorvertible evidence, so you should be more circumspect in writing headlines stating that the demonstrations are all a put up job.

“Had the IDF used rubber bullets only, and had a handful of protesters infiltrated the border, they could have been rounded-up quite easily and sent back with no loss of life and no harm to Israel’s reputation.”

These protesters may indeed have been paid by the Syrian government, and they indeed may have been throwing rocks and molotov cocktails. Nevertheless, the progression of going from warnings in Arabic to tear gas to live ammunition is not a logical one, and only serves to hurt Israel’s reputation. Live ammunition should only be used as a last resort. Had the IDF used rubber bullets only, and had a handful of protesters infiltrated the border, they could have been rounded-up quite easily and sent back with no loss of life and no harm to Israel’s reputation.

Under its headline Israel ‘kills 20 Golan Heights protesters’, Daily Telegraph then goes on to describe how a Syrian human rights group said that 38 people had been killed in the Northern town of Jisr al-shagaur and 65 in the town of Hama on Friday, leaving readers to assume that this was Israel too, doing the killing. And all the time they are reporting, just as matters of fact, deaths of American and British soldiers at the hands of Muslims, not to mention suicide bombers killing their own. I didn’t see a single comment comparing Nato fighting rebels to Israel doing the same, nor the fact that there was not a single journalist reporting from the Syrian side and verifying what was happening. I wonder why? The BBC made much of Israel not allowing any reporters into Gaza during cast lead so they could ‘report the facts’, yet didn’t seem to be too worried about going into the Golan.
Israeli soldiers should be taught to throw stones at the oncoming protesters who are ‘only throwing stones’
I wonder whether it is realised just how serious a situation exists for Israel and Jews, the World over? Its a total reversal of how the World sees the fighting in Afghanistan and Libya and everywhere else where Muslims are fighting the West. If The West had to play by the rules they put on Israel they would have to applaud the deaths of Western troops at the hands of the freedom fighters.

I sent an email letter to the NY Times expressing my disappointment in their coverage and saying that they were off to a bad start in burnishing their image under their new executive editor. I fully expect it to have all the impact of water off a ducks back. Still, I’m glad I did it. Someone will read it and I encourage others to also. I think these things have a cumulative impact.
I also think we should send emails to people who may use the news, like James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Palin, AIPAC and the government of Israel (they need to know that at least some Americans support them and aren’t snowed by Political Correctness).

Your strategy of taking the media fight directly to the perpetrators/JewHaters is certainly a good one. I do it ALL the time. And to either the faux-reporter or to the supervisor. Often it does even better to send the factual insult to a 3rd party where it is likely to get read and offend that side. Do not attempt to dissuade them; they are unwell and there is no cure.

Another strategy that I have used effectively(I have the insulted feedbacks to prove it really does offend) is to use the now settled science that JewHatred is a contageous behavioral disturbance at once of the individual and of the group. Stating to the Haters directly that we Jews now know that we are dealing with not thoughtful, reasonable, logical folk who have sifted and winnowed through the evidence and come to the conclusions that Jews are the cancer of mankind, the scum of the earch, the cause of all the world’s ills, the killers of G’d, hated by the Almighty, moneygrubbers, well poisoners, silent rulers of the earth and solar system, personification of evil, bloodsuckers, blood matzah makers(love that one), vermin, stinking corpses,viral sickness spreaders, who need to be eradicated from the face of the earth, who need to be reduced to slaves, better, slaves of slaves, accursed of the universe, and other intriguing homilies, but with mental patients, victims of mass-psychosis, obsessed with not living Jews(only as targets, mind), but with the fevered precept of the JEW-IN-THE-ABSTRACT.

Watch Glenn Beck sometime as he reruns clips of muslim clerics, children, mass clumps of adults, all screaming for the blood of THE JEW. The sickness that manifests itself is there for all to see. And take a look at all the loving cheerleaders as well in academia, unions, governments, everywhere.

So we are to remain strong as individuals, prepared, and as groups, as in Israel. The days of mealymouth are finished. Better all of us stand and deliver than be silent and unprepared. The lesson has been learned. It was once said that the only European leader who kept each and every promise to the Jews was Hitler. Listen to what the spiritual descendents of Hitler are promising to the Jews. They will deliver on all their promises. Just either lead the attack against these new workers of iniquity, follow the leaders, or get out of the way. Especially, you self-loathing Jews who hate your People, hate yourselves, and express this hatred/sickness by loving the enemies of your People.

The coverage in the UK has been especially scandalous. The Sun did not even bother to quote Syrian TV as the source of the ‘killings’ claim. It simply presented the Syrian claims as fact in its article which leads with the statement “Israeli troops killed at least 20 protesters on the Syrian boder yesterday”. Sky News was almost as bad. I have filed formal complaints about both. See here:

An excellent comment – the treatment of Israel by the various media is steeped in ignorance, indifference to truth, possibly self-serving, and maybe worse : visceral and blatant Jew hatred – a readiness to jump on any propaganda wagon, even if it grossly distor

ts the truth. If the West thinks they can curry favor by submitting to the Islamic hatred of Israel, they could be very mistaken. Israel is merely the appetizer – the grudge they carry against the infidel is the main course! Strange that a people that can dance and celebrate the horrible murder and destruction of 9/11, or sneak into a peaceful civilian home and slit a baby’s throat, so easily feels “humiliated” at every perceived action, real or imaginary. These newspapers should be ashamed of themselves – they are unethical and unprofessional.